I’ll no longer be posting here. But you can find me at my new place. 
So if you had me blogrolled or bookmarked, change it on over! And if you did have me blogrolled or bookmarked, you are awesome! There are also some new feed options over. So head on over.
At this very moment, the insides of my head are reverberating with frustration and tension.
Oh, where shall I begin? It all started today with my husband calling to tell me that in our house (in all of it’s post-christmas glory) was being shown to potential buyers in less than three hours. While three hours is a reasonable amount of time to clean your home under normal conditions, under today’s conditions…30 hours would not have been sufficient. You see, we flip houses. So our home is normally on the market after a certain amount of time. I am used to it. But still, sometimes it is very irritating.
Back to the story…three hours to clean it up with a toddler beneath my feet.
Then, earlier today I purchased a domain,hosting, and such. After I uploaded wordpress, it started shooting out random fatal errors and has yet to stop. While I am a fast and efficient learner, sometimes new things frustrate me when I have no idea what is going on…
On to the main event, my car broke down. at a gas station. RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE PUMP. It wouldn’t start. I turned the key, and turned it–and then, I turned it some more. But nope, nothing happened. No starting car. It was so embarassing: of course, cars were lined up for the pumps like they were all skipping town or something. And mine just decided to call it a day and block the pump.
Needless to say, I am now home (without my car) and back on my computer, fooling with all of this business. I am a glutton for punishment, I tell you. a glutton for punishment.
PS. I am not re-reading this to check for errors. Not today…
Well, I sense that it is time for the obligatory day after Christmas post. Dare I say that I am happy for the holiday to be over? Because I am. I bet you are too. It’s just so much at one time.
While Allie enjoyed the first Christmas where she actually knew what was going on, there was some point in the night, at our fourth house opening gifts, that she was knee deep in wrapping paper and half asleep. Sleepy eyes and all, her favorite gift was a Barbie Drumset. heh! I know..I know..who gets a two year old a drum set? Who burdens the mother of a two year with a drumset?
Oh well, who cares? She adores it. The irony in this all is that Allie is terribly spoiled due to many people competing for her attention. Yet, her favorite gifts were the $1 play-doh that “Santa” left in her stocking and a tacky little make-up brush set courtesy of me.
Honestly, I’m also terribly spoiled. By the end of Christmas, I was a very happy girl. I hope that all of you had wonderful holidays. And if you didn’t, I hope the people who made your holidays not so wonderful stub their toes tomorrow morning.
Oh!Expect many positive changes around the corner. *insert excitement–lots of excitment*
When I did my Christmas Hoopla post, I mentioned that we never had Santa growing up. However, I should mention that I have had a Santa Clause since then.
My first run-in with Santa Clause was the first Christmas that Adam and I were married. Feeling that my never experiencing gifts from Santa was a grave injustice, my husband decided Santa should visit me. While I crashed early on Christmas Eve he wrapped several presents for me from Santa, some were even childlike toys. My Little Ponies, Operations, etc. Various gifts that Santa would have purchased for me had I been a child. I had no idea, and when I awoke that morning, I was quite surprised.
Really, I was excited. It was quite a romantic gesture from a guy who is rarely the King of Romance. Not that I expect him to be, but romance is nice every once in a while–even for a cynic like myself.
I don’t know. It’s very cheesy and silly. But it nice of him to feel like I deserved Santa Clause. And he’s visited me every year since then. (No longer bringing childlike gifts, because seriously, what the hell am I going to do with a game of Operation? That blaring sound that occurs when you accidentally hit the metal part makes me want to poke myself in the eye with a needle..)
Anyway, Merry Christmas from my family to yours!
Moanna of Desperately Seeking Serenity tagged me to do this Christmas Hoopla. Since I love Christmas, the word hoopla, and randomly divulging details about myself via the world wide web, I am on this. Thank you, Moanna.
The rules established by this meme’s creator, Andrea, are:
1. List 12 random things about yourself that have to do with Christmas.
2. Please refer to it as a ‘hoopla’ and not the dreaded ‘m’-word…
3. You have to tag specific people when you’re done. No “if you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged” stuff is allowed. The number of people you tag is really up to you — but the more, the merrier to get this ‘hoopla’ circulating through the blogosphere.
4. Please try and do it as quickly as possible. The Christmas season will be over before we know it! Let’s involve as many people as possible!
5. Please give Andrea some link-love as the “Hoopla-Creator!
So here are my 12 random things:
1.) I give people specific lists of what I want for Christmas. While it’s nice to receive surprise gifts, not everyone is the best gift-picker-outter. If they ask for a list, I will gladly fork it over with details including price, color, cost, and location.
2.) My mother did not raise us (my brother and I) as Santa Clause believers. It wasn’t due to religion; rather it was the fact that she was a single mother working on her degrees and was not telling her kids that the gifts came from some stranger when she was going without sleep to purchase them. I love my mom.
3.) I always thought kids who actually believed that Santa Clause shoved his fatass down their chimney (most of them lacking chimneys to begin with) to give them free stuff were idiots not paying much attention to day-to-day life. (I’m sorry, I’m sure almost all of you believed in Santa, but I can’t go back and talk sense into young Amanda. She was stubborn as hell! That’s just what she thought..)
4.) I’m glad my mother never told me there was a Santa. I felt like I was in on a major secret.
5.) While I did not believe in Santa, my husband wants to convince my daughter there is a Santa. I let him, because he doesn’t ask for much, and I think Allie can figure this out for herself.
6.) I love to decorate Christmas trees. I do some beautiful work. I will post some pictures soon as bragging rights.
7.) I put up two trees at my house (a regular tree and Allie’s hot pink tree). I also put up four trees for my mother-in-law ranging from 12 ft tall to 7 ft. All trees have their own independent decor. We love us some Christmas trees.
8.) While Christmas is wonderful, I have to go to a bajillion different places to celebrate. It becomes quite taxing. But I love giving and receiving gifts. So I’m pretty much game.
9.) Today I celebrated Christmas with my dad and got some wonderful Le Creuset Stoneware and the neatest lap desk. I am drooling over all of my gifts. I am a very lucky and grateful gal.
10.) I love find the perfect gift.
11.) I love surprising my husband with his gifts. He is a casual gift opener. You know, the kind of guy who opens his gift and even if it was a million dollars wouldn’t get all excited. He would just be like, “thanks, i really like this.”
12.) Not I. I think I am the best gift receiver ever. I just get naturally excited and always boast about how much I love the gift. My daughter is also this way. It’s wonderful
Now, I know rule #3 says not to tag people. However, people get all cranky when I tag them. Apparently not everyone on the world wide web is as thrilled as I am about answering questions about themselves. And that’s okay. I’m not getting people cranky during the holidays.
But you should do it if you wanna! You know you wanna!
Some people have horror stories about taking their children to their local park and being stared down by Stepford Wive-ish gals in candy colored, cashmere sweaters adorned with festive pins. Truthfully, I wish that was my case. I wish that at the park today the women were discussing ridiculous things like reading toddlers encyclopedias and such so that I could roll my eyes 360 degrees.
Instead, from at least 30 ft. away I had to listen to two women talk about their ingrown pubic hairs.
Girl. Scout.Promise!
Honestly, my problem with listening to this conversation wasn’t that I’m a prude. I’m game for discussion about almost anything. But pube talk? In public? Even I would not do that..sober, particularly within range of little ears or my, still little, but adult ears.
Seriously though, shouldn’t there be a limitation on the radius in which a conversation involving pubic hairs can be heard? Say..five feet? Can the convo be limited to that? I mean, I think that’s being generous when we all really know the radius should be zero feet. There are some things you just keep between your privates and yourself. The problems mentioned above are most definitely such things.
Also, also, also, the best part is that my father is visiting from Georgia. Luckily, he has a wonderful sense of humor and continuously mocked these gals. (Who went on to discuss quick fixes for ingrown pubes, razors shaving creams, how long their beds were rockin’, etc.)
The many mysteries of the world…
My husband is an avid sports fan. He is always watching some sort of ball game or questioning me about random sports facts that I would never actually know. Some how the victory of teaching me the fact is worth the snear he gets after asking the question. And well, I’ve known of this sports addiction from day one. It wasn’t like one day he just developed a sports fetish in order to irritate me. I knew it existed when I got into this.
(His teams include,but are not limited to, the University of Kentucky for football/basketball, the Cincinnati Reds, and the Bengals.)
Anyhow, sometimes I think about the fact that I only have so much space in my memory, and my memory tends to pick up facts like a hoarder does useless trinkets. It always seems to grasp onto the most useless of things like the name of the person who checks me out at the grocery store, or the useless sports fact my husband often mentions. While I love this man, body hair and all, I do not love knowing the names/teams/numbers/stat/baby mamas etc. of various athletes. But he tells them, and my brain picks them up.
(And if you think he doesn’t belong to a message board where he consistently chats this bullshit up, you are dead wrong.)
I should list the facts out right now, all bajillion of them. But then I’d be tossing them your way and infiltrating your brain space. That wouldn’t be very polite;particularly when I just spent a while fitting about it.
To close, I will leave you with this question via photo that I found here. Honestly, which one would you pick?
I have returned! It’s nice to be back in my own home. While we had a wonderful time, home is always nice. I’ll be elaborating more about this trip after I dig up the cord to the digi-cam to post some pictures. Until then, I plan on ranting something awful.
I’m sure most of you are familiar with Back-seat Parenting. You know, it’s like Backseat driving where the person in the backseat keeps telling you how to drive until you are ready to scalp yourself;accept in Backseat Parenting people are butting in/whispering etc. their non-stop opinions about various things involving raising your child. I don’t mean spouses or the child’s other parent, either. I mean other relatives, maybe strangers, maybe your mailman? Hell, it could be anyone.
I’ve thought a lot about this topic lately. I’ve thought a lot about why not as many people openly blog about it, and I decided it was probably for the same reason that I’m going to semi-censor my blogging about it. Backseat parenters are probably backseat monitoring your blog.
After all, the people who do the backseat parenting, the very same people who feel the need to murmur under their breath numerous so called parenting tips or maybe they tell your (read:my) child yes after you’ve said no or vice versa. Well, those are the very same people (read:relatives) that might accidentally stumble upon your blog, or maybe they already read it. (Not you Mom, I’d tell you for sure.) The very same people who feel that every detail of your life is somehow their business, invited or not.
Nevertheless, I think most of the people that read this blog are parents. I think most of you probably know what it’s like. I don’t have to tell you that someone else randomly dishing out unwarranted parenting tips to you,that you neither needed nor asked for, is something akin to fingers scraping down a 10 ft. chalkboard…for six straight days.
I’m not saying I don’t ever need advice, because I certainly do. But I definitely do not need someone bossing my child around when I am within earshot. She has two parents, not four. Two Parents. TWO!
Honestly, I’ve just had a lot of drama with this since Allie was an infant. This person consistently goes behind my back to my husband or their spouse with their little tidbits and concerts. Never to my face, always behind my back. Once even ruining my birthday party by going behind my back and nixing my plans for a babysitter. Really, The person doing this isn’t an ass of any sort in a normal situation. They probably don’t even know they are being so fucking annoying abrasive. They’re just way too over protective, even over their adult children. It’s ridiculous. So ridiculous that I cannot even breathe while thinking about it.
I wish I could go more in depth with this as elaboration might really capture the take home message. But I really just can’t. All I can do is pound the frustration out on my poor little keyboard. A keyboard that is already missing the ‘Y’ key since my daughter took it upon herself to rip it off. Perhaps if I had taken the advice (murmured behind my back) of said person and not allowed her around computer, that wouldn’t have happened. What-the-hell-ever. <–So middle school, but I can’t help it right now. I am feeling the frustration/anxiety of a preteen not invited to the big boy/girl party.
I’m off for a few days to a chalet in the Great Smoky Mountains. I hope you all have a nice weekend! Also, you should check out these posts:
Those are a few of my favorite posts.
I decided I would make a list of some of the random things I like some that I placed on my christmas list. Some of them are practical and most are very impractical, either way they are all things I enjoy. I come from a family where everyone wants to know exactly what you want. So I make a list, even as an dault. Aside from the silly things one this list, I also asked for things that are way more practical and donations for certain charities. I’m related to people who tend to spoil and overbuy. Which does not suck (I’m not complaining about it, really), but still. I feel like I should sort of justify myself before posting a giganto list of ridiculous things I like. So here it goes:
1.) Le Creuset Dutch Oven (Blue or Green)
I love stoneware. I love Le Creuset. I love cookware in general. I’m pretty excited about this, because while I’ve already used the word love like sixteen times. I also LOVE to cook.
2.) Sewing Machine:
I’ve wanted to start sewing forever. I have so many ideas running rampant through my brain for things I’d like to create yet I have no machine to create them with. So I thought I’d place this on my christmas list this year. I’m pretty excited about it.
3.) Elton John’s Greatest Hits 1970-2002:
Don’t hate. I love Elton John. I can’t help it. I’m just enamored by his songs. I even support wearing extra huge sunglasses! Your Song, Bennie and the Jets, Rocket Man, Tiny Dancer… How can you not love Elton John?
4.) Coach Carly Signature Purse:
I know, I know, I know. But I love nice handbags, particularly Coach handbags. And I can not get over this design. The quality of these purses is so top notch. While they are expensive, I would dare to say that a person who buys cheap purses goes through the same dollar amount of purses for the lifespan of a coach purse. I don’t know. I just like it.
5.) More Stoneware!
See #1 for elaboration.
I.
Love.
This!
6.) “Be nice to me or I’ll poison your food” Apron:
Seriously, this is too cute. I’m all over this. I love aprons with funny things on the front of them.
7.) Reef Blue KitchenAid Mixer:
More cooking supplies. I can’t get enough of it though. I love all things cooking. I’m pretty excited about this, because I think my mom got it for me. *Squeals* Perhaps it’s sad that I’m this excited over an appliance, but seriously, I love this damn thing.
8.) His and Hers Keyholders:
How cute are these? Not to mention, handy! Plus, I like the way instead of hanging on a hook you actually turn a little key into the notch. Everyone needs a set of these, especially if you’re like me and have a toddler that frequently hides your keys for the sheer enjoyment of watching you hunt them down.
9.) Tiffany Heart Toggle Necklace:
It’s so beautiful. I like how casual it is for a necklace, and the toggle part. I’ve wanted this for forever.
10.) Hand/Immersion Blender:
More kitchen stuff. I know. Immersion blenders are so handy though. They’re convenient for soups, milk shakes, making tornadoes in a glass to amuse your toddler. You name it!
11.) My Fair Lady DVD:
Oh how I adore My Fair Ladyy, and Audrey Hepburn. I could go on for hours about it. “Jus’ you wait ‘enry ‘iggins jus’ you wait!” Audrey Hepburn is the cats pajamas.
I seriously get excited like a kid on Christmas morning. Which isn’t a bad thing, because I’m really happy with anything. I’d be happy with an empty wrapped up box. I’m all, “SCORE! AN EMPTY BOX! I LOVE TO UNWRAP STUFF! WOOT!”
With Allie, Christmas is even more exciting because she gets super pumped opening gifts. I’m ready for it. (Though I should admit I have NONE of my shopping done. :))
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